John Tlumacki (pictured) is a staff photographer for the Boston Globe, and has been with the paper for 32 years. Here’s his recollection of the events of April 15, 2013, as told to Charles Butler. Note: A shortened version of this interview appears in the July 2013 issue of Runner’s World.

“The feeling at The Globe was like, ‘Uh, another marathon. Here we go again.’ This year just seemed like Oldsville. I got there at 8:30, got my photo credentials, waited for the wheelchair runners, then there was an hour until the elite male and female runners. You get the jubilation, you get them being crowned, you get them with the trophies. Same thing every year. We thought maybe the woman from Marblehead [Shalane Flanagan] might win the female division but she came in fourth.”

“Two and a half, three hours later, somebody commented to me, ‘What are you still doing here?’ From my experience, some of the greatest pictures come later, when your average runner comes across. He’s not an excellent athlete, but he’s still a runner, and he’s running for a cause, or she’s running for a cause. Sometimes they even have the children catch up with them in the home stretch. There’s a lot of nice, moving, joyful, celebratory photos.”

“I was right in the middle of the blue and yellow tape of the finish line, and I photographed a man with a little girl about seven years old, holding hands. The announcer said, ‘Let’s have a cheer for so-and-so who’s raising money for the Children’s Hospital.’ Then the explosion went off.”

“I felt the percussion. My cameras jolted up, so I was kind of off balance. Two marathon volunteers in yellow jackets ran on each side of me (pictured below). Then instinctively I ran forward. That’s when I saw Bill Iffrig on the ground in front of me.”

“In my mind I’m going, Was that something crazy like a manhole cover or is it a cannon salute? I didn’t comprehend it. I smelled gunpowder, and right as I’m photographing Bill on the ground, the second explosion happened in the distance. On some of my frames, right before the police officers start running over, you can see the flame and blast in the background (pictured below).“

“I didn’t know how serious it was when I was taking those pictures. I was shooting, trying to get something, and the police officers were kind of shocked. They helped Bill up. Then we ran over to the steel barricade (pictured below, Tlumacki on left). I looked over and what I saw was unbelievable. I was looking through my camera, just shooting and thinking that any minute I was going to get thrown out. A police officer said, ‘Hey, you better get out of here. There could be a second explosion in this area.’ Another police officer said, ‘Please use some dignity while you’re here photographing this.’”

“Every person I saw was getting help from bystanders. I saw a man who ripped off his T-shirt and tied it on the leg of another man whose leg was bleeding. The man who took his shirt off had little pellet holes all over his back from the blast. He probably wasn’t even aware of it.”

“I was probably there for 15 to 20 minutes. There were a lot of things I didn’t turn in, photo-wise. I saw legs blown off, people in shock. I shot the woman who died. I didn’t know she had passed away at the time, but a female Boston police officer had two fingers at her throat, checking her pulse.”

“I walked through all this blood. It wasn’t something I want to remember. I saw a lot of bystanders helping. I saw people in yellow jackets who minutes before were helping racers across the finish line. Now they were wheeling wheelchairs and hands-on stopping people from bleeding. I thought that was amazing.”

“I got back to the office and everybody asked if I’m all right and they gave me a hug. They said, ‘You know what, we’re going to leave you alone. Go do your thing.’ That was nice. I usually edit my own photos, so I sat in my usual spot in a dingy room with gray-covered walls and went through all that stuff. It wasn’t easy. I tried to do everything in the order that I shot it. So the iconic photo [of Bill] came up third or fourth in the sequence, and then I had to go through all the gruesome stuff.”

“I didn’t know I had the Bill photo until I got back to the office. I didn’t know the police officer, the woman on the left, had her gun out (pictured below). I was more focused on all the other photos of the people injured and stuff, and I didn’t think that photo would have as much impact as it did."

“In 32 years at The Globe, I’ve seen a lot. I was in Uganda covering the effects of a Civil War on the civilian population in the countryside. There were roadblocks with teenagers who were high on drugs, pointing AK-47s at you, saying, ‘How do I know you’re from the press?’ But I don’t think anything will ever compare to this. This was the most horrendous thing, the most difficult thing I’ve ever been through.”

“I didn’t get home till 11:00 at night. My wife is waiting at the front door and we hugged and it was teary. I showed her some photos. I didn’t show her all the stuff. We were just sitting there and couldn’t believe it.”

“There was a whirlwind of interviews for TV, radio, and newspapers. I had to do Piers Morgan that night. Even Polish television interviewed me because I’m Polish. A writer from The Washington Post wrote a very elegant article. She compared all iconic photos of the past and she compared mine to Iwo Jima, ‘The Girl with Napalm’ in Vietnam, and RFK getting assassinated. I can’t fathom that right now. What I want my photos to do—as a collection of all my photos, of people helping and showing terror in their faces—is help people respond. If there was some possibility that these photos helped, I’m grateful and I served my purpose.”

“On Friday after the bombing, the city was shut down and I was driving around trying to get photos of what it looked like with nobody in town. I drove by a memorial on Boylston Street about two blocks from the finish line (pictured below). I didn’t know whether I could deal with going back to that area. I got out of my car and took a picture of all the balloons. There were three crosses and people had left trinkets and running shoes. I kind of got emotional. I went back to my car and got the photographer’s bib that I wore at the finish line. I went back to the memorial and placed it in front of Krystle Campbell’s cross. I felt really heavy. I had to get out of there.”

“It took a toll on me right away. I had trouble sleeping for a couple of nights. But I think I’m getting better. I was going so hard, working 12- and 14-hour days right after the bombing, that the hardest part was decompression — not doing anything, just sitting out in my yard, watching the grass grow, and listening to the birds. So I’m trying to keep things slow.”

“I don’t even feel like covering the marathon ever again, but I almost think I want to be there next year. I think I’m sensing from other people that it’s going to be the biggest marathon ever.”